House passes bill to boost retail crime enforcement and gift card fraud fights

The House moved a retail crime bill forward by a 348-60 vote, giving organized theft and gift card fraud a more direct path into federal enforcement. For Target store teams, the practical question is not Washington procedure but whether the law would make the sales floor, backroom, and fulfillment areas safer and less chaotic when theft rings hit a store, drain inventory, or force extra work on already tight shifts.

H.R. 2853, the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, would create the Organized Retail and Supply Chain Crime Coordination Center inside the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations division. The center would coordinate federal, state, and local efforts, work with private industry on threat information, track trends, issue annual public reports, and review grant and training programs. It would also sunset after seven years unless Congress extends it. The bill would let prosecutors aggregate theft values totaling $5,000 or more over 12 months for certain federal stolen-goods charges and would expand money-laundering tools to include gift cards as monetary instruments, aimed at a fraud channel that has become a staple of organized retail crime.

Retail groups said the vote matters because the problem is no longer just isolated shoplifting. The Retail Industry Leaders Association said the House action was a critical step toward protecting employees, retailers, and communities, and said the bill gives law enforcement tools to coordinate and dismantle organized retail crime enterprises. The National Retail Federation, United Parcel Service, the Association of American Railroads, the Peace Officers Research Association of California, the International Council of Shopping Centers, the Intermodal Association of North America, the National District Attorneys Association, the Reusable Packaging Association, and the American Trucking Associations are among the supporters.

Target has already described the cost in its 2025 annual report, saying the company has historically experienced inventory shrink from damage, theft, including organized retail crime, and other causes, and that elevated shrink has hurt and could continue to hurt results. The company says it uses a multi-layered security approach and has dedicated asset protection team members in every store. It also says it is raising standards in stores, improving training, and trying to reduce friction for store teams, which matters in high-volume areas where stolen or counterfeit goods can add more scanning, more counts, and more time spent fixing inventory problems instead of serving guests.

The legislation reflects how retail crime is being recast as a coordinated interstate problem rather than a string of separate incidents. That shift already showed up in Congress last year, when the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance held a hearing on organized retail crime that included Target witness Shane Bennett, principal of cyber defense for theft, fraud and abuse. The National Retail Federation says more than 84 percent of retailers reported violence and aggression from criminal activity had become more of a concern since 2022, and it said larceny incidents rose 93 percent in 2023 compared with 2019. With Senate companions reintroduced by Chuck Grassley and Catherine Cortez Masto on April 10, the next test is whether those enforcement tools survive intact and turn into something store teams can actually feel on the floor.